Or a fool, perhaps, for all her sonneting, for there are men who relish a weak headpiece as the chiefest ornament of women, especially when its indeterminate vagaries boast an escape-valve remotely connected with the fine arts.

In fact, the choice of the Capital had turned a society, provincially content to run in accustomed grooves, quite topsy-turvy; and, perhaps for want of some other escape-valve under the new pressure, the townspeople grumbled consumedly.

See here, how handily I can cook one, "he added, striking his stick into a little cavity of a rock, from which, as from an escape-valve, hissed a jet of hot steam, --" see here, I nestle the egg in this little cleft, and it will be done in a twinkling.

Now and then, partly as an escape-valve for his overcharged conviction, partly in compassion to the ignorance of women in political economics, he threw off to Margaret divers commentaries on the text, as she passed in and out.